


In Nijo's Shadow

by Star7



Category: Slam Dunk
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Anal Sex, Drama & Romance, Falling In Love, Loneliness, M/M, Samurai, Swordfighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:14:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25938724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star7/pseuds/Star7
Summary: "...the tiny, elegant bow of his thin obi set against the small of his back seemed so simple and easy to undo. So unlike the yards and yards of fabric the women wore, intimidating in complexity. This was a knot that if you pulled, it would unravel, and the cotton would slide from his shoulders inch by inch like a waterfall.I must confess I spent a good deal of time watching that knot."[senru] Sendoh x Rukawa samurai-era historical romance over two chapters.[imported from ffnet - originally published Jan 2012]
Relationships: Rukawa Kaede/Sendoh Akira
Kudos: 2





	1. Part 1 - Rukawa Kaede

**Author's Note:**

> For Anita and for AddictedtoSD. For being there from the start, and subsequently refusing to let me stop, through the good chapters, and the bad ones. All my thanks.

It was in the days just after the fall of the shogun that we were most alive. A time when we had felt, really felt, finally, that there was something to die for.

We had taken it for granted for so long, our two hundred year dynasty that couldn't fall, our own assured glory, whether we survived or died made no real difference. We lived in luxury and died in pointless bickers with each other for lack of any other enemies. We scuffled and fought over such pointless things as honour. We were warriors without war, and the days were slow and empty.

I was known as a prodigy then, in days of peace. Youngest son of Ahiko Rukawa, who was a feared swordsman and personal friend and bodyguard to the shogun himself. I too was renowned as a rising swordsman in my turn. At the age of seventeen I was all set to follow my father's path - to take over my father's seat near the heart of the shogunate. It seemed like my destiny, and I longed for it with a yearning that dwarfed anything I'd ever felt before. My place in the world. What was due to me. The harvest of all the hours spent swinging a sword until my hands bled. It had all been for this.

As children I, and my six elder brothers, had run rampant within the palace walls, scolded by the servants, but growing up like kings. We had watched our father work - shadowing the great general's steps no matter where he went. We had heard of Nijo Castle, beyond the mountains to the West in Kyoto, the true seat of the Tokugawa clan, but still we puffed with pride to know that the shogun lived here with us in Edo for most of the year. And though we knew that this Edo Castle of ours, site of government for the entire country, was only our temporary residence on account of our father's position, it was home to us. We loved it, and we knew no other world.

I shall remember it always. The feel of the weeping willow's leaves lashing across my cheek as we ran and laughed beneath her canopy, tugging heartlessly at her beautiful branches as we wove a secret den for ourselves behind the curtain of her leaves. The sight of the blossoms in spring lifting from their binds to flutter in brief, new-found freedom, only to fall ever so gently to the still surface of the lake like a thousand butterflies. The warm, roasted scents that drifted daily from the palace kitchens, the temptations of exotic almonds, sweet sugary treacle, plums and pears dipped in honey and glittering like gold before our eyes, were often too much to bear.

And so my childhood passed in a land of absolute beauty. As one of Ahiko Rukawa's sons naturally I had trained daily, for hours at a time, at the sword school founded by the Tokugawa shogunate two hundred years before. There, I gradually surpassed everyone I met. My eldest brother was eight years older than me, yet by the time I was ten, I was his equal with a sword. By the time I was eleven, I could reliably beat him in any spar.

They praised me. They spoke of my father, and how I had inherited his great skill, at how life would bring me everything I needed, such was my talent, and I believed them. Such naivety, I believed it. The whole world was changing around us and we didn't even know it. Sheltered by the palace walls, blinded by the elegant landscaping, we didn't know it. We didn't know anything.

And then, abruptly, or so it seemed to us, came the day that we were defeated. The warring factions trumpeted their victory at Kyoto, claiming the imperial dominance over the Tokugawa clan.

We later learnt that the shogun my father so revered, dedicated his entire life to, had fled from the battle leaving his men to die. That same shogun returned to us, defeated, at the castle in Edo with only a small surviving entourage. My father was not among them. He had been left behind on the plains before Nijo Castle; just another tattered body on the field.

The imperialists declared the Japanese people a restored people, no longer to live under tyrannous oppression, but to exist in peace and steady growth, isolated from the evils of the Western nations, under their true and rightful emperor. Then they turned their marching feet towards the castle at Edo. Towards our home.

All this was meant to be glory. There were celebrations among the common people, spectacular affairs where people who had nothing at all, barely enough to feed themselves, still scrapped together large parties and gatherings in their communities in honour of the restoration of the great emperor Meiji. And we, the scrabbling remains of the Tokugawa shogunate, who had kept peace and stability in the name of the emperor for over two hundred and fifty years, loyal to him until our last breathes, were abruptly cast as the devils, the rebels, the enemy.

Our leader, the shogun, soon surrendered entirely. Edo palace fell and was occupied by the group of the newly-celebrated rebel samurai who declared themselves loyal to the Meiji Emperor himself. They would come to be the first Meiji government.

It was a time of great change, excitement and wonder for all Japan. But the strongest memory I have of that furious period was standing still and silent on the deck of the ship as we fled from Edo, our precious home, and followed the ragged and defeated remnants of the Tokugawa samurai army to Hokkaido.

That was the day I grew up.

I awoke. And suddenly I was there. No longer were we assured our honour in death. Finally, finally, fighting to survive after so long.

We rose up, the last great battle, a samurai army the like of which you've never seen. And this time I was old enough to rise with them. My sword, I told myself, would be needed. I was seventeen years old, but I was equal to any man. Blades that would have long rusted had it not been for constant polishing were urged into motion again. The rich Hokkaido earth beneath our feet became a blood bog with our long-dormant power. We slew a thousand men, standing immortal at the centre of a spray of weaponry, delivering our arts with all their precision and elegance. Blood flew, yet did not stain our hakama. We, the resurrected gods.

Those lost days. I look back on them and know, now, that those short, bloody battles for a lord already lost were perhaps the greatest moments of my life.

But we were already defeated, and an end was inevitable. Slowly everything ground to a close, like a great train hauling its breaks and rolling to a stop punctuated with that last final lunge before motionlessness. I was alive, so many of my brethren were not, but this was the real end.

The remaining Tokugawa leaders were imprisoned to patiently await their execution. As for me, I was too young and unimportant for the opposing forces to care about. They didn't bother to waste their time and resources to destroy me. They simply stripped me of my name, my title, my samurai class, and left me to fend for myself.

They made us common, took away our souls and our self respect. Those that had once feared us as samurai feared us no longer. We became common mercenaries, drunkards, bullies and thieves. We lost ourselves, and we had no way back to the light.

And me? I fled Hokkaido, the site of our defeat, and found my way to the new capital – Kyoto. To the streets below Nijo Castle, the new seat of the newly restored emperor. And there, in the attempt to lose myself, I found alcohol. Alcohol and women.

The alcohol made me forget myself, but the women always reminded me again. I'd see them and remember - I was the whore now. For all my skill, my perfect upbringing, for all my unfulfilled promise, I was the one with the debts and the black future and the scorn of those that had once looked up to me. I was the one with my pride in the gutter. Even the silk-clad prostitutes of Shimabara had more than me. Even as I used them, I could feel their mocking thoughts and scornful eyes.

Many of those I had grown up with took their own lives. People I had lived beside, and then fought beside. People who were my peers. The three of my brothers who had not already found death of the field. All of them chose an easy way out. There was the possibility of following them, yet I never could bring myself to it. After all, what honour had I left to preserve? What was the point of that?

So it became a long list of procrastinations. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I will leave this world. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I will restore my honour. Until tomorrow became weeks, and then months, and then the idea was discarded all together. It was too late. Now, there seemed little point. I might as well carry on as not.

And then there was _him_.

He seemed like a prince among paupers when he moved through the gathered painted faces of the brothel women, his sleeves hitched up with string to reveal strong, hairless forearms, carrying the heavy _taru_ of sake to and from the kitchen, his simple cotton yutaka shifting with his motions. He was dressed like a servant, true enough, but there was something in his features that couldn't be disguised by common wear. His body was strong and his arms sculpted as if he'd been labouring all his life and yet somehow I couldn't bring myself to believe it. He looked, at least to me, like he could have been one of the marble statues I'd seen in the palace _kitanomaru_ gardens. Elegant and refined strength matched with distant, other-worldly perfection. More spirit than human.

And then there was the tiny, elegant bow of his thin obi. Set against the small of his back, so simple and easy to undo. So unlike the complicated yards and yards of fabric the women wore, intimidating in complexity. This was a knot that if you pulled, it would unravel, and the cotton would slide from his shoulders inch by inch like a waterfall.

I must confess I spent a good deal of time watching that knot.

Perhaps you think I am mad; that a young man surrounded by beauty and softness and women for my taking, would spend the hours admiring the ankles of a servant boy. But such is how I am.

So I would watch him throughout the evenings, as he came and went from the kitchen, even as I had female silk-clad bodies pressing against my arm where I sat sipping cheap sake. But my interest didn't dissipate, if anything it only grew stronger. The more I watched, the more curious I became.

I tried to wheedle information out of them, the women who opened themselves willing for me in exchange for a few coins. His name, his identity, when he'd come to work here, where he lived. I asked but never received any answers. Just excuses and denials - _I don't know_ – they'd say. _There are so many servant boys here, which do you mean?_ And every time I'd grow frustrated. There was only one I could possibly mean. There was only one with such blue eyes and such perfect features. Only one who looked as if he could have been descended from Tsukuyomi himself. I knew they were playing false with me when they denied any knowledge of him, but what could I do?

So I watched him from that distance, drinking away what little money I had left. I had no home, no friends, no allies. I had no cause to fight for, no family to protect. I was a wanderer who didn't wander. I haunted the streets of Kyoto like a ghost, steadily fading away. I wore my formal samurai _kamishimo_ not from pride, but because I had no other clothes to wear. The small savings I had been able to escape Sapporo with had nearly gone. Once the money ran dry I wouldn't be able to afford these simple escapes any longer, but I wasn't really aware of things like that. I'd not been brought up to wrestle with finances. It had always been expected that I would rely on the patronage of a powerful daimyo, or perhaps even become one myself. I didn't have any other concept of work, of savings, or the true value of money.

Even if I had, there was little I could do. There was a constant chill at my waist where my long-faithful sword should have been. No comforting weight at my belt. Government police had taken my blades – my samurai soul - from me and left me thus empty, without even the simple means to defend myself or work the only trade I knew. Rendering the calloused skin of my hands meaningless. Leaving all those years of practice in the dirt.

Sometimes, during the day when the bars were not yet open, I sat at the kerbside and just watched the life of Kyoto walking past. The elegant geisha, hair full of flowers, faces painted right down their necks. They all looked so young, so unhaggard, so many worlds away from me. Yet none of them could match the stunning beauty of even the most meagre chambermaid at Homaru Palace. The women who had attended the shogun had been beautiful beyond compare. Sometimes I would close my eyes there on the side of the street and the sights of Kyoto would be replaced by the perfect tranquillity of the pond at Hasuike-bori, the trees that wound their way down to the still water, the slate grey boulders gently mossed with bright koi fish flashing between them. I saw the rocky paths thrown with white gravel where were had once scampered carelessly in childish joy. The weeping willow under whose branches we had attempted to make a home.

At those times, remembering a past that was lost to me, bitterness and longing would rise up in me like waves.

It was as I sat like that one afternoon, lost in regretful dreams on the street in front of the brothel, that someone caught and tripped on one of my outstretched legs. They stumbled noisily, and, my daydreams interrupted, I looked up irritated.

My exclamation of rage died on my lips when I saw that it was that servant, the very one I had always watched, carrying a large basket of dates which was obscuring his view of the road ahead. The load must have been heavy for his footfalls sounded like hammers on the dust of the road.

Realising that he had collided with someone he set the basket down and hastily apologised with a low bow. It was the first time I had ever heard his voice. Deep and warm and comfortable and he spoke with easy formality, asking my forgiveness.

Annoyed, I looked down and saw that in the collision, the thong of my willow-wound sandal had snapped. My daydreams had put me into a foul mood and, upon seeing the damage, I snapped at him angrily, demanding that he compensate me for it.

He straightened from his apologetic stance and looked me over briefly. My dirtied clothes and face, the air of dejection that hung around me, my sorry story was plain for anyone to see. I was a fallen samurai. I was not worthy of their respect or fear, though I demanded it still. I was arrogant and prideful, clinging to the past, embittered by my fall, lost, homeless, pathetic and utterly pitiful.

All the dark and twisted things he saw in me. I am quite sure he saw it all.

Still he got to his knees in the dust of the road beside where I was sitting and held out his hands to remove the snapped sandal from the sole of my foot. I let him do so, watching the top of his head move as he leaned over the shoe and set to work, his large, work-worn hands demonstrating a surprisingly delicate dexterity that his muscular size didn't suggest.

I stared at him as he worked, noting all over again the impossible perfection of his strong shape, how his skin was unblemished and boyish. Not the alabaster prince I had imagined. He was warmer, much warmer, than that. I guessed his age was similar to mine. Subconsciously I lifted my hand to my own face. I hadn't looked into a mirror in months and I had no idea what I looked like now. How did I really appear to him?

I struggled for a little while, and then I finally found my voice enough to demand, "your name?"

He paused in his work for the briefest of moments to reply "Akira."

No family name, I noticed, like most of the peasants. The commoners were often prone to take the names of their samurai daimyo, but in this period of unrest all the daimyo were being upended, changed or slaughtered, and the people no longer knew under what name they existed.

After a moment the boy lifted the sandal up to show me how he had repaired it. It was elegantly done so that the break was barely visible. I could not have done such a good job myself. I took it back from him with a little reluctance, begrudging in my thanks.

He peered at me then, squinting his eyes as he looked up into my face with as much curiosity as I had paid to him when I had thought he wasn't looking. He seemed a little surprised by what he saw.

"You're young," he declared in some bemusement.

I frowned. No doubt it had been meant as an innocent comment, from a simple mind, so I forgave myself the chore of sifting through the possible implications of that statement.

But still I wondered - did I appear old, then? Was my seventeen-year-old face wrinkled, hair greyed? Honestly it wouldn't have surprised me. I felt like I'd lived a thousand years too long.

"What's your name?" He queried next, with not quite the appropriate amount of respect, but still the painstaking effort he'd put into my mended sandal seemed to warrant some regard.

"Rukawa" I replied, a touch haughtily, the high ancestry of my family name feeling like a comforting blanket around my long injured pride. "Rukawa Kaede. Son of-" but then I stopped myself halfway. What good would invoking the name of my slaughtered father do now? I scowled and left the sentence incomplete.

"Rukawa" Akira repeated thoughtfully, looking over me once again. He sat back on his haunches, making himself more comfortable, as if he had the intention of sitting and talking with me all that bland afternoon. "What is your story, Lord Rukawa?"

"Story?" I echoed, arching a brow.

Akira gave a patient nod. "What paths did you choose to bring you here, to this place, at this hour?"

When I did not reply he gave an encouraging smile; "Everyone has a story to tell, in this day and age. You were born a samurai; that I can see. But now, where are you heading?"

I stared at him and could not answer his question. He spoke of chosen paths, but I had never made a choice in my whole life. I had only ever stepped the path that was laid out before me. I had left my fortune to destiny. My story was a story of obedience to the wills of others, and my final sorry fate heavy in their hands. I was heading nowhere at all.

He heard my silence and a flicker of disappointment appeared in his features. "I love the samurai arts," he told me forthright, puzzling me with what seemed like an abrupt change of subject. "But the world is changing. The war at Kyoto was fought with guns, not swords. Great sticks that rain death, killing the skilled and the unskilled without even getting into range to strike." A shudder ran through him as he recalled the unpleasant memories. I wondered if he had snuck to the edge of the battle to watch the mighty samurai clans come to clash, and seen more blood than he would have cared to.

I knew of the guns he was referring to - I had seen them myself in Hokkaido. Before that battle I had comforted myself that my father had died a noble warrior's death, but in the end it seemed he, so much for being the most celebrated swordsman in the country, had simply been peppered with metal shards by unskilled foot soldiers. All that glorious talent so easily decimated.

Yet Akira's seriousness struck me through my melancholy as he spoke again, his strong and dark eyebrows rising emphatically with his words. "The ways of war are changing. There's no place for the samurai anymore."

I stared at him, this common boy so sure in his words, speaking like a great scholar or philosopher. What did he know? What could this servant boy possibly know of the hundreds of years of history, of legacy, of a family name that I and I alone carried on my shoulders? How could he stand there and tell me to wipe my history away after I had sweated and toiled so long and so hard to preserve it? How could I unbecome the very thing that I was?

To not be a samurai would be like asking the trees not to bear leaves, or for the tiger to stop being a tiger. It wasn't possible. I didn't understand, and I couldn't see.

He left me then, strange, perfect boy that he was. Picking up the basket of dates with his strong arms and hoisting it towards the doors of the kitchen without looking back again.

It felt suddenly cold there by the wayside without him. Much colder than it had been before. Still I remained there immobile for the rest of the afternoon, just staring blankly forward, utterly idle. No one else came to talk with me. Of course they didn't. No one ever did.

Once the sun had sunk low in the sky I finally moved. I looked in my money pouch and saw that I had enough, and then rising from my seat, legs aching with sitting in one place for so long, and made my way into that so-familiar bar where Akira worked, hoping to lose myself again.

I sat at my usual table and ordered my usual round of cheap sake. I had no reason to suspect that it wouldn't be another night just the same as all the others that had preceded it since I had arrived in this broken city.

The bar was an unpleasant and grubby place, a big, smoky room with low round tables, sticky with residues, and cushions well worn and frayed. The women wore gaudy colours to cover a lack of sophistication. They smeared their lips with red and wore silk kimono once vibrant but now worn and faded like the cushions and throws they knelt beside. They all of them had lines of worry and encroaching age under their face paint. They tried to hide it as best they could, as if their hopeless reality was something of which they ought to be ashamed. Not that I could blame them for that. I felt so much the same way after all.

The woman who joined me at my lonely table that evening was one I had come to know quite well. She liked me, perhaps because I was more gentle than most, while other girls kept away, made nervous by my fierce appearance. She was sweet enough, keeping quiet unless I addressed her directly, which I seldom did. She dedicated her time to me, sitting at my side, tending my needs, pouring sake and pressing herself against my arm in soft suggestions. I mostly ignored her until the time would come when I would take her to one of the unremarkable rooms at the rear of the building and bed her so that my frustrations might be released, and she might be paid for her efforts.

We'd gone through this routine several times before and so she was familiar and accommodating of my ways. It was an uneasy alliance, of which neither of us were fond, but in which both of us found necessity.

However, as the tenth hour of the evening rolled on, there was an unexpected commotion at the door.

I looked up as three large samurai strode inside, hands on the hilts of their long-swords as they surveyed the gathered patrons and whores who looked up unanimously at their entrance. It was odd to see such men here. A low-class brothel like this was a place for the socially excluded, not for rising gentry. They didn't belong here, that much was clear. Still they stepped purposefully in my direction when they caught sight of me, and the woman by my side moved closer to me in nervousness. I watched them approach without much care. It didn't have anything to do with me.

"Rukawa Kaede, son of Rukawa Ahiko?" One of them demanded, levelling with my table.

I took a quiet sip of my sake. The entire bar was looking our way. With movements utterly unhurried I set my cup down, moving the sharp alcohol around my mouth, though my teeth, tasting it leisurely.

Finally, after excruciating moments, I met their stare head on. "What business might you have with me, lords?" My words were polite, but my tone dripped with derision.

"Got some attitude for a boy who still smells like milk" the nearest one snarled, running his hands up and down the length of his sword hilt suggestively. "Sure you can handle these women, kid?"

I tilted my head as if the question made no sense to me and just gazed steadily back. The conversation stalled, until one of the other men stepped forward.

"We've heard your sword surpasses even your father's. Is that true?"

I shrugged, noncommittal. It hardly seemed to make any difference. The days of my father were over. However my casual silence seemed to annoy them.

"Fight us!" the first declared forcefully, leaning forward, eyes shining with bright conceit. "One on one. We'll pay you. Five _ryo_. Ten, if you're really as good as they say."

I looked at him with unmasked disgust. Just more bored samurai looking for ways to die. Bothering me with their puny requests as if I had nothing better to do then drive their weak souls out of their soft, mortal flesh. Hardly what I needed in my life.

In answer I shook my head clearly for them to see. It wasn't as if I could accept the challenge even if I wanted to - I didn't even have a sword.

Unfortunately they were unwilling to accept my simple dismissal readily.

There were no further words. Once again there was no choice, and little or nothing I could do the sway the fate of my life. It had all been before me from the beginning. I could neither have predicted nor avoided what happened next.

Like lightning a sword drew and struck. It confused me for an instant, but my confusion soon faded back into reality, my hard-honed instincts prickling me.

She fell back in a grotesque spew of blood that did her no justice, her head separated from her body, her worn kimono soaking in the vibrant red of her short but violent death.

Her head rolled with a kind of sickly comical expression across the tatami floor, and bumped against a nearby table leg.

Screams suddenly burst forth from the rest of the patrons staring on in horror. I lifted my sake cup to my lips again with a long sigh. One sip, and I turned apologetic eyes upon the butterfly shattered on the ground. Innocent blood, I fancied, looked so much brighter, like it was made of sunshine.

Setting my empty cup down, I slowly pushed myself to my feet. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the servant, Akira, standing frozen in the kitchen doorway, immobile as he stared through the outbreak of pandemonium. However even as I stood I saw him finally turn and dash off as if overcome by the whole thing.

I felt very alone.

I looked down and watched the mended thong of my sandal shuffle along as my feet reluctantly followed the three grinning samurai out of the door.

They escorted me round into a side alley, wide enough for three men to stand shoulder to shoulder, more than enough room to swing a sword. All of them were jittery with excitement and blood lust. Three punks, riding high on the imperial victory, shouldn't have caused me any trouble. In ordinary circumstances, I wagered, looking at them critically, I could have cut them down. However, I still had no weapon. My enthusiastic assailants didn't seem to have taken this into account, or they just didn't care. They were only intent on adding the name of Rukawa to their list of conquests, and nothing but my defeat seemed to matter to them.

It wasn't the idea of death, or dying, that bothered me particularly. Rather I found it hard to stomach the idea of giving up our name so easily. And to men so undeserving of it too. But still, if this was perhaps a chance to escape what I had become, I could accept it.

So I shuffled my feet into the familiar lunge, the cool flecks of gravel grating under my sandals. A stance I had adopted a thousand times before, but never in circumstances quite like this.

Still it didn't occur to me to protest my unfair disadvantage. My hands moved automatically to grasp the non-existent sheath at my waist, closing around air, preparing to perform a lightning quick draw which would fail to save me this time, no matter how perfectly I performed it. I lowered my centre of gravity, bracing my feet against the floor so that I wouldn't loose my balance, lifted my eyes and prepared myself to die.

"My lords, wait!"

My eyes flickered to the side to see none other than Akira standing a few feet away from me, a long katana clutched in his hands.

"Lord Rukawa, your sword."

I stared at him in confusion, but he only held the blade out reverently for me to take, the barest hint of a knowing smile flickering at the corners of his lips. I hesitated, staring at the offered weapon with widened eyes. I hadn't held a sword in months after a lifetime spent handling one every single day. I wondered if I'd go mad if I touched this one now.

Still it held it out to me, and with my brow arched in suspicion, I took it uncertainly from him.

My hands, I realised, were gently trembling.

I looked it over dazedly, like a man who awakens from a dream to find riches in his hands. The sword was perfectly balanced, a weapon made by a master, not a cheap imitation or a punk's plaything. It was a good sword. One fit for a daimyo.

With my eyes still on Akira, not able to looked away from the dark amusement in his face, I slid the sheath into my _uwa-obi_ where it sat with the reassuring weight I had missed so terribly. Things seemed more probable, less desperate, more optimistic, just with that weight at my side. As if control over my fate had been handed back to me, my depression lifted.

I tilted my head, only slightly, in recognition of the favour he had done for me, and turned back towards my opponents. This time, as I returned to my preparatory lunge, I knew I was facing down not death, but victory. Not darkness, but tomorrow.

The first man came at me, a battle cry on his lips as he charged, katana held in a wild jaunt back across his shoulder, ready to swing down and dismember me at the neck. He didn't get the chance. Akira's blade sung sweetly as it accelerated out of the sheath and took the man's life in one smooth pass.

Surprised, perhaps not having really expected a fair fight, the two remaining men quickly came at me simultaneously. I shifted my feet and turned the blade slightly, gripping it tightly in two fists.

Things moved faster than sight. I had long ago abandoned the effort to see with my eyes during battle. I trusted my body's instincts absolutely. A cut to the right as I moved one step back, the ring of metal on metal as swords collided, then a shower of sparks as they racked viciously together and with a final upwards thrust, the last of the three men fell obediently to the floor.

I pulled the blade out of the man's stomach and held it vertically, pointing down so the liquids could run off the blade to the dirt. It had been over in a matter of seconds.

Akira's silence was almost tangible. Still I ignored him resolutely until the blade had mostly cleaned itself. I looked again at the sword in my hand and felt a thrill of joy at the way the moonlight caught the metal like a smile. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Mesmerized by the delicate but deadly blade I lifted the sword to my eye to read the elegant calligraphy engraved into the metal near the handle.

"Sendoh" I read aloud. Then I looked up at him and waited for an explanation.

Instead of speaking, he simply held out his hand in a gesture that clearly asked for the sword to be returned. I didn't move.

"Where did you get this?" I demanded.

Instead of turning defensive in the face of my questioning, he simply smiled.

"It belongs to my family," he said, unconcerned. "It was my father's sword. Now it is mine."

I narrowed my eyes with distrust. "The Sendoh family" I said suspiciously, "held the Tokugawa seat at Nijo Castle. They were the long trusted allies of Yoshinobu Tokugawa here in Kyoto."

"That's right," he confirmed with all pleasantness, determinedly oblivious to the sound of the accusation in my voice. I was accusing him of stealing the sword – perhaps from the battlefield he had already confessed he had been to – but he steadfastly ignored my implications. Rather he tilted his head to the side and replied; "And I believe the Rukawa clan were the famous family of bodyguards charged with protecting the shogun at his residence in Homaru Palace over in Edo."

I opened my mouth, and closed it again. It was entirely possible he had learnt that from a loose-tongued samurai visiting the bar. Possible but, it seemed to me, ridiculously unlikely. I hesitated longer than I ought to, before I forced the query out, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, feeling like an idiot even as I said it, not really believing it.

"Are you saying that you are… samurai?"

But then I shook my head. I was being ridiculous. How could he possibly be from such a powerful, influential family, this boy? He was just a servant, low born, working in a brothel who had stolen a sword. What the hell was I getting so worked up about?

"No" I answered my own question with another shake of my head. "That's impossible."

He grinned then, wider than I had seen him do so yet. There was light in his eyes; excitement, I realised. But not blood lust, not like the three men before him. The desire to fight, not to kill, but to test skill, was something that lit him up and made him even more beautiful than before. I felt as if I was drunk with him. I wanted just to breathe him in.

"Let me prove it to you" he offered gamely, holding out his hand once again for the sword which I finally passed back to him with some reluctance. It was far and away the best blade I had ever touched. "Let's make a wager," he continued. "Whoever wins the spar must do as the other says."

I think I must have stared at him as if he were mad. Hadn't he just seen me cut down three men in the space of moments? Did he really think he had a chance against me?

Still he seemed unnaturally confident in himself, gesturing in invitation for me to retrieve of the swords from the defeated at my feet. I did so, not taking my eyes off him, somewhat bemused by the strange turn of events. It all seemed strangely surreal. I knew I ought to refuse – it was probably breaking a hundred rules of family bushido to engage in a spar with a commoner – but he had some kind of power over me I couldn't explain. Just the opportunity to spend this time with him, even here among the blood and guts of the slain, set my skin on fire.

And then there was this _wager_. I'd be lying if I told you that the possibilities hadn't already presented themselves to me. The things I could do with him, could make him do, if only I had the courage to demand them. If only I could admit to myself, and to him, just what enflamed me so badly. If I could have him, as if he were one of the _kagema_ , I felt myself already trembling with the thought of it.

But I think most of all, and most secretly, I was hopeful of somehow finding something like a friend – someone whose situation was in so many ways similar to mine. I think what I wanted more than honour, or death, or the past returned to me, was just an end to this unbearable loneliness. I was standing on a frontier – never before in history had an entire social class been thus culled. I didn't know _what_ I was anymore. I was desperate, truly desperate, to find that he was, as he claimed, a son of the Sendoh clan, a samurai by blood, fallen, like me, with the rest of the Tokugawa allies. I think I needed that most of all.

So I picked up a sword, swung it in a vicious hiss, testing it against the air, turning it around so I would strike on the side without a blade. It felt light and easy in my hand, like it was an extension of my own body. My confidence was high as I took up my position again, waiting for Akira to respond to the provocation.

He grinned, and then he moved.

 _Fast!_ I thought, bringing my blade up in surprise as the Sendoh sword came closer to my neck than was comfortable. It took all my wits to parry the swipe and move away. Almost immediately, it seemed, the blade was there again, at my left, driving for my undefended side.

My feet did an inelegant twist that very nearly sent me to the floor in my effort to avoid that swing.

Everything about our fight was fast and dangerous and absolutely phenomenal. It had been years since I'd had a serious challenger who was close to my own age. It wasn't only Akira's sword that was fit for a daimyo – his skill was too. In speed he matched me absolutely, blow for blow, with instincts that might even have surpassed my own. It was as if he knew where I would strike before I even turned my sword his way.

Sword, family, blood, heritage, all those things could be feigned, but there was nothing that could emulate a lifetime spent swinging a sword. Whether he was born from samurai stock or not, he was easily the most talented swordsman I'd ever known.

Still I like to think I was his equal, if not his better. I could have beaten him, I'm sure, if other circumstances hadn't moved against me. But I'd been drinking that evening, and my reactions were slowed while his remained sharp. I hadn't eaten proper meals in weeks, subsisting on small bites and alcohol. So in the end, once again, the wheels of my life came round to my detriment. My muscles exhausted themselves against Akira's unforgiving blows, my speed dropped off with each subsequent parry, slower with every thrust, until I could no longer keep up the furious pace we had started. Finally it was my exhausted body that broke down so that even as I knew what I needed to do, my muscles no longer heeded my commands. We broke apart after another lightning exchange of blows, and I felt my legs stumble beneath me, my head growing light with uncomfortable weightlessness. I was breathing hard, so hard, grating my lungs on the frantic rush of air, so I thought I might die from want of oxygen. I panicked, only briefly, feeling myself give way. I'd never felt so dependent, so out of control, so enslaved by my own weak flesh in my entire life.

And then, before Akira could attack again, I swayed where I stood, my eyes struggling even to focus, my whole body turning distant and numb. I couldn't even feel the texture of the sword grip in my hands any longer. Keeping my eyes on him, I finally lost my hold on the world. In the midst of our fight, in the middle of that dirty alleyway, my own bemusement written on my face, I am ashamed to admit that I fainted. And so, to my eternal shame, the wager was lost.


	2. Part 2 - Sendoh Akira

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I had grown up surrounded by the beauty and luxury of Nijo Castle, but it had never been a home to me. I had been born into a samurai family, but I had never really felt like one."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again for Anita and AddictedtoSD.
> 
> Happy Birthday Akira! Feb 2012

I hated him.

I hated him from the very first day I heard his name. Years and years ago.

I can remember it clearly.

I sat a little way apart from my brothers, my legs going numb from my formal kneeling position, my starched hakama itchy and stiff in the hot weather. Before me, laid horizontally on the floor like an offering, was my bokken - a full length wooden sword. A pleasant breeze blew in from the open door frame of the dojo. Beyond it, the rising battlements of Nijo Castle lifted over elegantly landscaped lawns. I closed my eyes to feel the soft wind moving over my cheeks flushed from exercise. The breeze transformed this hot, sticky day into a beautiful one.

My father, however, seemed anything but comfortable. He kept wiping his neck with his hands, and a sweat brought on by the summer heat shone over his greasy face.

He was a large man. A powerful politician and fearsome warrior. We were all terrified of him. He stood before us now like a giant, hulking statue. We sat in silence and waited for his address.

"Rukawa Akihito" he informed us, "has gone and named his youngest son his heir. Crafty bastard."

We waited, quiet and still like reeds, wondering what this had to do with any of us. My father dug his way deeper into bakufu politics than any of us really understood. He was sensitive to political waves, although his chain of thought was seldom immediately obvious to us. This time he rolled the letter he held into a cylinder and pointed it angrily in our direction.

"Do you want the Sendoh house to be entirely forgotten?" he accused us.

Those sitting closest to him flinched slightly. The rest of us dutifully shook our heads. I didn't exactly know what I was concurring to. The complex manoeuvring of the bakufu houses was beyond me. Rukawa Akihito was a name that was sounded familiar, but who he was, or why his youngest son should infuriate my father so much, I didn't know.

My father crumpled up the paper violently and threw it at the floor. "A prodigy they call him. A genius!" He looked like he wanted to hurl an obscenity. "Kaede fucking Rukawa!"

The dojo master at his side gave him a critical sideways look. Perhaps he thought my father was stark raving mad. I often thought so. He glowered angrily at all of us, as if we had failed him, as if he were incensed he didn't have a prodigy of his own.

 _Ah ha_ , I thought smugly to myself, as if I had cracked a complex enigma. _That explains it. Simple jealously._ I did not let my moment of self-satisfaction show on my face.

"Two of you" he announced abruptly, getting down to the nit and grit of it finally, the real reason he had stormed in and interrupted our practise, "will go to Edo. I've had enough of hiding in the shadows. It is time for the Sendoh family to stand up."

Around me, my brothers exchanged puzzled glances. I didn't move. I felt my heart squeeze up against my ribs.

Go to Edo. I wondered if I had heard him right. What a thought. I had never left Kyoto before. I had never even left the walls of this castle. The possibility of a journey – of exploration – was remote yet strangely marvellous to me. I tried to imagine it - a grand escape to another place where they wouldn't know me, where they wouldn't judge me. Edo. Though I'd never even entertained the thought of the city before, suddenly I wanted to see it. It seemed to me to be a unexpected escape from my contracted world.

My father was continuing his tirade.

"The two strongest will go" he declared. "Go and match those Rukawas blow for blow-" he pumped his fist as if suddenly overwhelmed by passion, "-an exhibition for the shogun. Let Tokugawa see that the Sendoh clan is also worthy of his attention."

"But father..." the eldest and bravest among us, four years my senior, spoke out in confusion, "...you told us that the shogun already does us great honour by entrusting us with his family seat here at Nijo..."

My father glowered at him, enthusiasm evaporating, and annoyance taking its place. "He would do us greater honour" he snapped, "were he to grace us with his so honourable presence."

The dojo master looked hugely uncomfortable suddenly. I only tilted my head in curiosity. It was rare that my father – politician that he was - lost control of his tongue. Young as I was I already knew it was sacrilegious to speak of our shogun in such a way.

"The two strongest" he repeated, taking a breath and speaking more calmly, "will go." He turned to the dojo master behind him. "Which two have the greatest skill? Skill enough to beat a so-called prodigy?"

Our teacher swept his eyes over us. I knew what he would say, and couldn't help but look up in anticipation, my heart thudding.

He seemed a little nervous as he said it. I expect he already knew what my father's reaction would be. They'd had this argument before.

"The strongest?" He grimaced slightly, "The strongest is Akira. Beyond a doubt. Akira is a prodigy himself. If you would acknowledge him before the bakufu I'm sure he would win their respect. He could bring the Sendoh family great honour."

My eyes were shining hopefully as they both looked in my direction, and I'm ashamed go say I almost believed it. Right then. There was a second, a tiny fraction of time and nothing more, when I really believed it was possible for me to prove myself to all those who doubted me. That my father would support me. That it might actually happen.

My father looked highly uncertain, and I knew he was weighing up the possible consequences. I waited, my breath baited, trying to plead with my eyes. Couldn't he see my desperation? Just a chance. Just one chance was all I needed to turn everything around. I wouldn't let him down.

Slowly, he shook his head. "No" he replied, and turned his gaze away from me. "Not him. Who else?"

My face immediately flushed red with anger and humiliation. No one dared to look at me. My fists clenched on my thighs so hard my nails drew blood. My shoulders were trembling, but they all pretended not to see me. They all looked through me as if I wasn't even there.

Where was I supposed to direct my frustration? An unrecognised, unacknowledged boy like me? Should a child hate his own father? The brothers who did not accept me? Or perhaps hate the teacher who did not bother to press the case any further? People I saw, and had to live beside, every day of my life.

No. I found it was easier, and safer, to throw my anger in another direction entirely. I could turn all my injured wrath against a boy I'd never seen before. That now, thanks to my weak-willed father, I probably never would.

Yes, I found, the emotion of hate came quite readily.

But would you blame me for it? For vowing to myself there and then that one day I would strip Kaede Rukawa of all the glories he had stolen from me? For promising myself that one day I would crush him?

Yes, I hated him from the very first day I heard his name.

Though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that what I really hated was myself.

* * *

_Seven years later..._

There were often enquiries, or so I heard. Inevitable, I suppose, in a place like this one. Still they tended to offer a lot, the _kagema_ trade being more profitable than the female equivalent. Male submission, it seemed, was rarer and thus more valuable. And they were always the same type of men. Usually the lower class of samurai, and middle-aged. Somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five. Losing their hair, beards turning grey. The kind of men who no longer cared for public opinion, who had realised they were getting old, and after a lifetime spent bedding loose women decided that they no longer wished to deny themselves the opportunity of bedding men instead.

Still, their offers were always refused. I hadn't sunk that low yet, after all. Though that wasn't to say they didn't occasionally take the initiative and attempt to force me into a room or corner, hoping to subdue me against the dark wooden slats, not realising that I was neither as weak nor as desperate as they liked to think I was.

They would keel over, bent double towards the tatami mats like the old men that they were, and I would leave with a quiet clack of slippers, my dignity intact but somehow feeling oddly empty. A year ago I would have put a blade in their souls. Was pride really dead? Sometimes I wondered if I wasn't doing this all wrong.

Still, I was pretty used to dealing with these types of men by the time I noticed _him_ watching me.

He always sat upright. I think that was how I came to be so aware of him. He formed his own presence in my mind, a straight backed figure with a cup of sake in one hand, and a woman at his side who he ignored as steadfastly as if she were not there at all.

I did not know his name. I had never seen him before.

From the state of his clothes and the hopeless air of idleness that hung on him like a drape it was clear he was down on fortune. But still; that straight back. He impressed himself upon me like a brand. I, who stooped so low.

I never looked at him except from the corner of my eye, this strange customer. I carried on as always, having him only in the back of my mind, like a quiet but insistent presence, all the while assuming that he, like so many of my other admirers, was just another middle-aged pervert to be dismissed.

So I waited, expecting an enquiry, a summons, a forceful attempt upon me, but nothing happened.

Often, sometimes more than four nights in a week, he'd be there. Always, I could feel his eyes on me. But each time he would take some woman to bed and the night would end without a glance being shared between us.

I think it was his reluctance that interested me the most. That in this dirty world, fallen so far, he still had pride enough to stop him from turning to me, to stop him from admitting his desires. Pride. The thing I sat at such odds with.

I still had pride, a least some small mote of my samurai soul. But how much of it was valuable? Had I lost too much, or preserved too little? Where was the balance to be found? I tried to convince myself, night after night, but the truth was that I wasn't sure of anything.

I had grown up surrounded by the beauty and luxury of Nijo Castle, but it had never been a home to me. I had been born into a samurai family, but I had never really felt like one.

Besides, in the last few years, so much had changed. The entire world had distorted out of recognition. The life I had once taken for granted, I didn't even dare to contemplate any more. I was lost to myself. What I was. Who I was. It was all I could do to survive each day.

But then... he. To my unfocused eyes he appeared to be something steady. Something sure. I found myself irreconcilably drawn to him. I began to watch him across the smoky bar room more and more. Wondering, perhaps, if he had answers where I had none.

He bothered no one, caused no trouble, and kept very much to himself. A quiet mystery. He wore his hair long, halfway down his back, at first pulled up into a formal topknot, but later tied back loosely at his nape. His formal kamishimo hinted that he really was samurai, more high-born than most that frequented us here, but there were no swords at his waist.

 _A samurai without a sword!_ The chef and kitchen staff liked to gossip and laugh about him behind his back. The cramped and untidy kitchen with its spills and its stains and its contaminated meat would echoing with the sound of their contempt. _He was obviously defeated. How shameful. He should go and commit seppuku and be done with it._

…shameful?

What did that mean to them... to me? _Shame, pride, honour._ Bound together. Things I tried so hard to distance myself from. I had no right to judge anyone on such basis. I knew it was dangerous – always denying, second guessing myself, drowning in my own hideous hypocrisy - but I couldn't help it. I couldn't escape myself, my lost heritage, or my slaughtered father who still loomed large and terrifying in my mind. I was caught between the two halves of myself.

Eventually my increasingly guilt-ridden conscience drove me to ask my colleagues what they knew. It was suggested that he was one of Enomoto's defeated, fled from the fighting at Edo or the north. But it was all conjecture, nobody seemed to really know, not even his name.

He wasn't from Kyoto, that was sure enough. They said he had a strong Edo accent, and tied his obi in the Eastern style. As one who had never left the city myself, just those small regional differences gave him a whole new dimension of curiosity. He'd seen things I hadn't seen, been places I hadn't been. Though I did my utmost to stifle it, just the sight of him caused my heart to move painfully for a past I had lost. Opportunities I had been denied. Things I wanted to forget.

 _No_ , I tried to block it all out. _This_ , I tried to convince myself, was where I belonged now.

But... there was something about him. Something as small as the tilt of his head, the distance in his stare, the fact that he sat upright and proud even though they secretly mocked him. He reminded me all over again of this old blood of mine. Reminding me that pride, in certain measure, could still be beautiful.

And then, weeks later, I finally heard his name.

I was surprised, that I will admit. Initial denial preceded cool disbelief. An unpleasant relic of my past life. This was not some distant samurai, some farm-bred creature from the countryside, but that once-reputed child genius who had so clouded my childhood. The proud prodigy of the famous Rukawa clan. Someone whose existence was strung tightly to mine, although of course he didn't know me. The object of my vicious one-sided rivalry.

But the surprising fact is that my emotions didn't rise as rapidly as I thought they might. Besides my astonishment I had no urge to swing at him, to hurt him, to revenge myself upon him. This person I had dedicated years of my seething pain to destroying didn't sear me as I might have expected him too.

Perhaps it was because I saw he was broken. Perhaps it was because I was the one who was broken. Whatever the case, the emotion in my gut stirred slightly. Nothing more than that. A gentle motion, a kindling of that which I had thought destroyed – my own hard-wrought pride.

Yes, I knew it was dangerous. But I thought, I honestly thought, that I could handle it. I believed I had control over my emotions, that after so long I would be immune to him. Of course I was wrong. His appearance in my life could only mark the beginning of a painful reawakening.

And then, that same day, for better or worse, things came to a head. I watched him. I watched the way he didn't move, didn't even flinch as the unfortunate girl was dismembered right beside him. I saw his coldness. He watched her head roll without an ounce of sorrow in his features. His disinterest disgusted me. A samurai wasn't allowed to even be human in moments like these.

The patrons and staff members squealed and ran in fright, but I did not. I did not move. I watched her headless corpse leak blood over the matting with the same distant immunity he did.

I disgusted myself.

He rose silently from his seat and I watched him still.

Among these people who laughed and scorned him, spoke so casually of seppuku, judged him all the while having no concept of a samurai's burden, he alone was strong. He was strong and utterly beautiful. And I wondered - why should he exchange his life for theirs? What compelled him to do such a thing?

Why?

I hated him, and I hated myself for feeling my heart move for him, sad and pitiful and prideful creature that he was.

Mirrors that we were.

So I turned and I ran. I had vowed I would defeat Kaede Rukawa. Years ago, I had set my path against him. I told myself that I couldn't let him die before I had the chance to pay him back for all my years in blackness.

I ran. And as I ran I felt hot tears streaming down my face. And I knew I had already decided to throw it all away. That it was time for me to pick myself out of the ashes of Nijo.

Akira. That was what they called me. A common, simple name. Sometimes I wondered if my father hadn't named me that out of spite. A worthless name for a worthless son. Yet I was a Sendoh none the less. The last one. Indeed, the only one.

Just like him.

So it came about that again, I watched. The beauty of his movements, the nostalgic song of his sword through the air. He pierced me. Everything about him. Everything.

I can't really explain it. Why, in that moment, the world seemed to contract. So small, suddenly reduced, and nothing seemed important any more. Not my lofty ideals, my personal vows, the direction of my entire life. Nothing seemed as important as him.

My false world just collapsed. He left me standing there, my soul clammering for him. And then, before I knew it, before I could even grasp hold of my racing emotion, I realised that I was, so much more than ever before, _myself_.

And him. It was all because of him.

He defined me.

* * *

He slept beside my fire, the contours of his face deepened by the shadows cast by the flames. His was a glamorous kind of beauty. The sort of person who drew attention with no effort. Furious strength tempered with great sorrow. Magnetic. It was difficult to pull my eyes away.

Still annoyed with myself for letting myself fall into such a trap, I helped myself from the bubbling pot of stew suspended over the fire. The smell of boiling turnip carried comfortingly on the warm air. This one square room was my modest home. It wasn't much, but I held it more dearly than I'd ever cared for any of the thousands of rooms at Nijo.

My guest showed no signs of waking. He had collapsed midway through our fight and hadn't stirred since, not even as I struggled to lift and drag him home.

I folded my legs and, still watching him breathing gently, sucked greedily on my spoon. The soup tasted a little bland. Vegetables had their limits. What I wouldn't have given for a taste of my mother's cooking now.

I saw her in my mind for a moment, a classical beauty. Hair like lacquer, skin like milk. No wonder my father had wanted her. I stared into the flames for a moment before pushing the memories away. She was beyond my reach now, and just as well too. If she had known what had become of me, it probably would have stopped her heart.

I finished my soup slowly. The night was already dark around me and eventually I pulled on more clothes, laying down on the opposite side of the fire from my sleeping guest to whom I had already lent my one and only mattress. I watched him for a while longer through the flicker of the flames, surprising myself all over again that I had ever thought he could have been a middle-aged man. From this distance, seeing his thin frame, his smooth, youthful skin, the mistake was impossible to justify. He was twenty at most. Younger, maybe. Still, the eyes that had watched me across the room, I was sure, had seemed so much older.

He was sleeping peacefully, with his lips slightly parted, his hair spread out over the sheets. I wrinkled my nose a little bit. For all his dramatic elegance it was clear he hadn't had a bath in weeks. I resolved that that was the first thing I'd make him do when he woke up.

Despite my best efforts to suppress any false optimism, I remained shamefully hopeful that we would somehow… understand one another. But it was tempered by a strange fear. I was – I realised – irrationally afraid of him. Of what he would think of me after I had already invested so much of my emotion into him. Finally, amidst all my worries, I fell asleep like that, imagining our long conversations and listening to the crackle of the logs.

By morning, however, he still hadn't woken.

I got up and, dressing up warmly, let myself out into the yard at the back of the cabin. Damp and decaying leaves covered the ground. I heated up the water in the old wooden bathhouse outside the back door in preparation, shovelling coals onto the fire that burned under the copper boiler, then fanning with wide bamboo sticks strung with cloth to keep the smoke out of the house and the flames fierce. My breath rose in puffs of vapour before my eyes but the exercise kept me warm. I fetched out the wooden washtub for laundry and set it ready in the centre of the leaf-strewn yard. I swept up debris from the porch, and then, feeling hungry and impatient, made a trip to the market to buy extra vegetables and tofu. I spent more than I really should have to purchase a few pieces of brisket to add much missed meat to the evening meal. I expected my exhausted guest would need it.

The sun had risen winter-bright, but it was still cold, and I drew my clothes tighter around me as I walked, avoiding the bigger puddles on the street, sandals clacking loudly against the frosted cobbles. It was a quiet morning, the chill weather driving most people indoors, a frosty solitude settling over the town. I found my eyes drawn up to the structure of the castle that loomed high above our heads, seeing how the sloping green rooftops were glittering with the frost. Beautiful Nijo - a stunning combination of elegance and warfare – the symbol of the lives we had left behind. It set me shivering even as I hurried back towards home.

There I found him awake.

He had pulled his kamishimo back on and was kneeling before my small looking-glass, looking strangely out of place in my simple and second hand home. He was no longer sitting straight-backed as he always had, but he had slouched slightly, as if he were tired. He was staring vacantly at the reflection of himself, my knife for chopping vegetables clutched fiercely in his hand.

I had, I remembered quite suddenly, beaten him in our spar yesterday.

I froze in the door frame, convinced he was going to plunge the blade into himself – it seemed the only suitably dramatic thing to do. But he did not. Instead he raised the knife and, with a decisive slice, cut right through the gathered bunch of his hair at the base of his neck. Inky black trails more than a foot long fell to the mat by his feet like the coils of a snake.

He hadn't seen me and I stood there embarrassed. I felt as if I had stumbled into something intensely private.

He continued to hack away clumps of hair with a wildly glazed look, like a man possessed, his movements fierce but his face distant. I set down my purchases and went over to him. I couldn't resist it. It was like watching Icarus fall.

He noticed me then, and he stopped and looked at me in the glass as I knelt close behind him. His expression was impossible to read.

I held out my hand. It was trembling slightly.

"I'll help you" I offered, my mouth dry. "You can't see the back."

He stared at me suspiciously for a moment, as if expecting me to mock him for his strange actions. When I did not, he handed the knife over with some reluctance.

I shuffled closer to him, and began to thin out the irregular clumps he had left.

His hair was dirty, but thick and vibrant. I wondered briefly if he intended to sell the strands – they'd probably fetch a good price. Almost immediately I shook my head at my own thoughts. How could I even contemplate putting a price on a samurai's soul.

I worked silently for a while. He sat patiently, staring forward at himself blankly, not appearing to really see anything, probably thinking of too many things.

Finally, after a long while, it was he who finally broke our silence. There was an odd tone in his voice, a curiosity mixed with suspicion. "Are you…" he began, "...really one of Sendoh's sons?"

His eyes had flickered up to focus finally on my face in the mirror. He was staring with a deep intensity, his curiosity, like mine, finally brimming over.

I smiled, perhaps a little bitterly. "Yes" I said, then hesitated before adding, "illegitimate, though."

"Oh" he tilted his head slightly, still looking at me.

The memories came back to me then. My miserable excuse for a childhood. My exclusion from the family, the cold shoulder of my father, and the aloof indifference of my brothers. It was so deeply engrained in me that I unable to hide the sudden flare of my bitterness. He stared at me, and I'm sure he saw the twist of my ugly emotions at that moment, but he said nothing.

I tried to hate him. I tried to rekindle that old fire that had sustained me in my youth, but I could conjure nothing. We were both in exactly the same situation. The past had been wiped away. We had both lost everything that should have been ours.

So I forced my emotions back, down, down into my gut, suffocating that fire as I sliced through the last rogue scrap of hair. I moved back to survey my handiwork. He looked nice, I thought, with shorter hair. He'd lost a little of his regality, but his striking looks had not been dampened. I got up.

"The bath water is hot" I told him briskly, "you should take one."

He nodded and rose elegantly to his feet. I showed him the way to the small bathhouse outside, trying to hide my awkwardness, and stood just inside the door, waiting to take the clothes he discarded to get them washed. I had found a plain but clean, winter-thick kimono and under-robe for him to wear, which I placed to the side.

The bathhouse was just a small wooden hut. It was divided into two sections: a small entranceway in which to dress and store items, and the main bathroom which contained a large wooden tub filled with water heated by fire from the outside.

I watched him move his hands delicately to push the fabric of his clothes back from his shoulders, the way he removed his strong arms from the sleeves of his kimono, revealing his tense back to me. I was surprised by the number of fresh scars he bore until I recalled he had been involved in the war.

"Where" I asked, my mouth suddenly dry as I watched him move, "where did you fight?"

He looked back at me briefly.

"Hakodate" he replied.

 _The North_. It seemed wild and dangerous and far away. The brief spate of fighting in Kyoto I had watched from behind walls and windows. I hadn't been permitted to fight alongside my father and brothers. I hadn't been deemed worthy of it. Perhaps one of the most skilful swords they had, and they hadn't made any use of me at all. For what? For honour? It still infuriated me, but what meaning was there in hating the dead? I tried to tell myself all over again that I had to let my long-held grudges go.

"What was it like?" I asked, a little deflated, but far too curious to pretend I wasn't impressed.

He turned away.

I saw his back again, laced with vestiges of damage; sword slices and stabs, the occasional peppering of a bullet chip. Wounds that were only a few months old, some still bearing scabs. Though he didn't say anything, I suddenly felt as if I could hear it. The sorrows of war seemed to howl in that small bathroom. Blood and noise. Not enough space to swing a sword. Cowardly fools hailing deadly bullets from distant hills. Crushed and crowded so you were forced to stand on the dying bodies of your own allies. Anger, giving way to sorrow, giving way to madness. Memories that were still fresh and raw and painful.

I looked down at my own sword-calloused hands.

Yes, I knew the foulness of war. The stench of blood. I knew it but still my fingers clutched the fabric of his kimono fiercely. Wasn't that the only thing I'd ever wanted? – the chance to fight. The chance to prove myself. I craved it, even now.

After all, war and death – wasn't that all we had lived for?

He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. He just stepped silently through the door to the bath and left me there, staring after him, the bundle of his kimono in my arms, my blood slowly heating in my veins.

I could torture myself with the same questions over and over again, but nothing would change. Why, then, couldn't I let it go? Who was left for me to blame? I, whose talents they had caged for no other reason than their own conceited pride.

I vented my frustrations by washing his kimono in the yard with more roughness than was necessary, and then hung it out to dry. It was sadly worn, but made of rich fabric, worthy of one of the great houses.

I re-entered the house still in a daze, the memory of his broken skin prickling me. I could see his faults, how the past was destroying him, and I tried to re-convince myself that I had been right in deciding to leave all that behind me, but still the urge to be like him was overpowering.

I breathed deeply, and found I no longer had the motivation to chop vegetables. I simply settled myself on the floor, legs untidily crossed, staring forward and trying to see the future, trying to ignore the past, my entire body tingling.

He returned some forty minutes later. I was surprised, mostly, by how pale he was. It had been hard to tell what with the dirt that had covered him before, yet I saw him now quite changed. The bloodied and hardened warrior I had imagined had washed away, and this... this _boy_ stood in his place. And in his young, fresher incarnation I saw even more the he was my equal, my peer, someone with whom I shared so much rather than a distant stranger. I stared.

He was tall and fine, and without a kamishimo to dramatise his frame he was a little smaller than he had seemed. The cloth on the clothes I had lent to him was plainer, poorer, but it only served to emphasise his boyish handsomeness by contrast. The slope of his shoulders was still proud, but no longer intimidating. His hair, in its new shortness, fell slightly over his eyes, and revealed the elegant line of his chin. The thin strip of his obi hugged his narrow hips, suggesting the body underneath that was lean and strong.

He looked at me with his deep eyes, and I remembered all the nights he had spent looking at me. All the nights his eyes had grazed me and I remembered that perhaps I wasn't alone in this turmoil. That even though he was someone I wanted to thrust away, a symbol of a past life I had rejected, somehow I also wanted to drag him impossibly close.

Seemingly oblivious to my discomfort he sat near me, his eyes moving over the lined up vegetables just as mine were moving over him.

He gestured with one slender hand, "these?"

"We prepare them for the soup" I replied.

He didn't exactly seem enthusiastic, and he clearly had no idea what to do, but he was responsive to instructions, and did what I asked without complaint. We worked together, side by side, chopping and peeling and washing in silence. I was painfully aware every time our shoulders or hands brushed against each other. I felt like my skin was electrified.

"How did you learn to do this kind of thing?" he asked finally, as he attempted to behead a carrot and sent the loose piece skidding across the floor.

I shrugged. "I used to see them working in the kitchens at Nijo. And then I just figured the rest out on my own."

"Nijo?" he echoed, looking up. "You grew up in the castle?"

I looked up too. "Of course," I replied.

He looked almost startled. I think that he hadn't really realised just how similar we really were. I expect he hadn't been able to shake his perception of me as anything more than a servant boy until this moment. He seemed almost embarrassed, and looked quickly away.

"How did you end up here?" he queried.

I looked sideways at him perhaps a little bothered by the question. The past was not something I wanted to discuss.

It was true that my father had been powerful man, but his fortune had never been destined for me. As the son of one of his mistresses I had had considerably less status than the sons of his wife. I was lucky enough to have been educated and trained, but no matter how I excelled at sword fighting, I was never going to be accepted by the family.

They had said I had a discommendable humility about me; an unattractive commonness that I had inherited from my mother. They didn't like the way I spoke, my manners, my blood. Of course I was taught to speak and act formally; enduring endless lessons in etiquette though I would much rather have been swinging a practise sword in the dojo or stealing fruit from the kitchens. But my efforts made no difference. Eventually, I stopped trying to please them. If the heads of the family wouldn't acknowledge me, and I wasn't in line to inherit my father's seat, what the hell did it matter? That's how it had seemed to me back then anyway. I was equal to the best of them with a sword, but they didn't like me. And so I didn't like them. My future had lapped in uncertainty right from the start.

The Meiji restoration had left me without family, money or a home. However, perhaps ironically, it was my condemned 'common touch' that allowed me to survive the war and its upheavals and leave my samurai upbringing behind.

I had been forced to take a job, or else starve on the streets, however my manners were such that I caused no one to suspect for a moment that I had been born into the prestigious Sendoh clan. I could fool people into thinking I was one of them, low-born, right here in the slums of Kyoto. It makes sense, I guess; without a sword at my side, I really am nothing more than another illegitimate child of another defeated lord.

But I know not everyone could have done what I did. Take this _Kaede Rukawa_ for example. He could never have convinced anyone that he was anything less than heir to a noble lord. Everything about him was just far, far too glorious.

And as irritating as that was, I supposed I had things to be thankful for. At least I had come out of the war with a place to work, a saleable trade, way to survive. Kaede Rukawa stood alone on the edge of an abyss.

So I shrugged in the face of his curious stare and said nothing. It wasn't as if he would ever have been able to understand anyway.

"Your sword..." he said in the face of my silence, struggling to frame his words, "...why did I never encounter you before?"

Another question I simply couldn't answer. I pretended I didn't hear. Thankfully he seemed to accept my silence and did not press me further. For that, at least, I was grateful.

As we continued to work I caught myself staring at him far too many times. I was waiting, I expect, for more questions. For demands. For prying curiosity. But he asked nothing more of me. Occasionally he would look at me, but then look away whenever I caught his eye. I ended up gazing with almost undisguised curiosity, trying to understand him.

I felt hot and strangely irritated. I don't know what I wanted from him. I don't know what I intended to achieve. It was only an itch, something that made me feel restless, uncomfortable, needy.

Once the vegetables were prepared I placed them all into the pot, stirred it for longer than I really needed to, and felt the empty silence settle on us again like a noose.

There were, thinking about it, many things we could have discussed. The actions of the emperor, the treachery of the Satsuma house, the blackness that stretched out before the both of us, our futures in tatters. I could have told him of my childhood in Nijo, or asked about his in Edo. I could have told him about how I had first heard of him and his sword all those years ago. I might even have admitted how I had decided, after the war, to leave my samurai upbringing behind; a simple minded intention to give up the sword, a resolve that had already been shattered in its infancy by the reappearance of my childhood rival. I could have confessed how I was prepared to give all that up, to change my whole life for him.

Yes, there were many things for us to speak of.

Instead, we sat in silence.

The steam rose in vapours towards the ceiling, the tempting scents of the soup quickly curling into the air, filling the room and us with a powerful sense of a home.

Slowly, amidst the silence and the bubbling soup, he seemed to relax. I watched him close his eyes almost experimentally, as if he were testing out the concept of peace. Allowing himself to settle, to be content, for the first time in however long.

I studied him for the umpteenth time, amazed at at his youth, his willowy form - strong and slender like bamboo - and the elegant symmetry of his face. I felt that he was beautiful.

Next to him, I felt ugly.

Not in a physical sense. I knew well enough that I was considered attractive - the loose-handed men at the bar had taught me that. No, the ugliness in me was my blackened soul.

I was discontent. I was restless and miserable and fraught with deformed emotions. I had wasted years of my life hating this person who, I now saw, moved so quietly.

As a child I had pinned only the worst kinds of traits on him. Conceit. Arrogance. Laziness. Complacency. Yet all of those things had only been distortions of my own jealousy. He was a swordsman, a proud warrior who had been called a genius all his life. And yet he was not arrogant. Not really. At worst he was only aware of his skill.

As I had seen him in the bar he rarely spoke. He retreated from interaction. He left others alone - did not judge them - and only asked to be left alone in return. He had a sense of duty, but maintained a distance. He was – I thought now – quite perfect.

And as for myself, I felt as if all the interactions in my life had conspired to taint me. The sum of my existence had only made me cynical and bitter. I hid my most ugly emotions behind a façade but I could not deny their existence. I was judgemental. I was unpleasant. In my heart I was decidedly unfriendly.

In short, I was a liar.

And like any lying, dark and twisted thing I found myself drawn with hopeful desperation towards his unadulterated truth.

Yes perhaps I had come out of the war ahead of him, but what had I sacrificed for my own comfort? At least he had a soul that was still intact, without reason to feel shame, still so proud.

His eyes remained closed.

I shuffled, almost in a trance, towards him. Crawling on my hands and knees like a dog and feeling no better than one. I felt irrationally as if I had let him down. As if abandoning my sword, my family name, my samurai blood, made me somehow despicable. I almost wanted to ask him to forgive me.

He opened his eyes at the last possible moment, but he did not stop me, nor protest, nor even seem surprised. I felt myself strangely welcomed as I touched my lips uncertainly to his.

To be him. Or to have him. Perhaps the distinction was not worthwhile.

I knew I was showing my darkest parts to him, but he didn't recoil. He accepted my desire with his eyes open while I, through my fumbled, desperate kiss, attempted to pour my black soul into him.

Perhaps, I realised, he had been expecting this all along.

At first hesitantly, and then with more and more fervour, we drew ourselves together. Lips pressing, limbs entwining, the fabric of our clothes crushed between us like a last safety barrier. I felt my mind expanding. Strangely liberated after months and months of anxiety, of labour, of stooping and bowing and trying to crush myself into a shell that was much too small for my soul.

This was so different. This was another world to me.

The more I moved, struggling against him and against my fate, the more I could feel myself being dragged out of myself, inch by inch. Renewed strength filled my limbs. I felt alive. I felt like he was giving me my long-awaited freedom.

His willing acceptance of my most pressing desire was like a gift of recognition. And as I pushed him back against the floor, I felt a sincere sense of gratitude. Why, I wondered, had I ever harboured that life-long urge to destroy? I only wanted to explore every inch of him and his crystal clear soul.

But this wasn't a gentle, playful tryst, slowed by girlish tease and long-lashed seduction. Both of us had been born from fire after all. He was not weak. Not gentle. And he made it clear to me that there was no need to treat him like a glass doll when he lifted his sword-calloused hands and clenched his fists in my hair, dragging me into his kiss with a furious kind of zeal.

Two warriors. This could only be war.

All at once I felt utterly wild. Unchained. Like bottled up rage breaking all my surfaces apart as we each released all our fears and our hurt upon the other. I clawed at his neck, desperate to have him closer to me, trying almost just to sink into his body.

I wasn't thinking at all. Both of us, in those moments I'm sure, lost control of ourselves completely. I was only aware of the furious skirmish of our lips and my body's desperate undulations as I pressed and rubbed myself against him.

Eventually we broke apart. I was gasping. So was he.

By now I was kneeling over him, one knee of either side of his hips. He looked up at me from the floor, his lips shimmering, his clothes in disarray.

We seemed to pause upon the brink of madness then. Staring at one another and seeing our expressions of wild liberation mirrored in each other's eyes.

Then slowly, almost with ceremony, he lifted his shoulders up from the floor and reached out with two hands around my waist. Gently he reached for the knot of my obi. He pulled at it with a strange sense of purpose, drawing the fabric through the knot with a gentle sound of fibres rubbing against fibres. I waited, frozen in place as the thing came undone, the band of it slipping down my front, the cloth of my kimono parting and slipping from me like a second skin.

His eyes roamed over my exposed body in appreciative wonder, his lips parting to expel a long sigh of pleasure that was breathy and hot. "Tsukuyomi" he named me quietly, in a low breath. _Moon god_.

I was trembling when I bent to kiss him again, pushing his clothing away, baring him so we were skin against hot skin as we moved together.

Feeling the time was right I moved back, wriggling away from his hot touch and repositioning myself between his legs. He stared up at me through hooded eyes. I knew he already expected and accepted this. I forced myself to breathe slowly.

I had never done this before. Not this kind of joining. And never with a man. So my fingers went into him first as if testing the way.

Dry and hot. He winced ever so slightly, but no more than that. We had, both of us, long learnt to endure pain. We had been born to it. But to endure shame, I knew from his ragged breaths, was costing him much more. A reminder that even he had demons to fight. Still, I pushed deeper.

"Those women never satisfied you, did they?" I said aloud, more to myself than to him, and more in wonder than in question. "Was it me who you imagined?"

He made no reply but just looked at me. Those eyes. I breathed out through my mouth in a rush, lifting his legs from the knees and feeling my body grow taut. The small room became full of the sound of our breathing. I closed my eyes and felt the world expanding around me like Nijo's walls falling, giving me an entire world that was mine.

In that empty moment, he was me. I was him.

I pushed forward with a sudden, furious thrust. His hips left the floor with the violence of it, a gasp of surprise wrenched from his lips.

I didn't pause, or wait, or savour the moment. I couldn't. I couldn't stop myself. Back, and in again, and back, my body quickly covered in a slick layer of sweat. His hands came up to run over my clammy skin, holding my forearms tightly in his grip. I pushed myself against his strength and revelled in the fact that I could not force him to give way.

How ferocious. I let my eyes roll with the pleasure of having his warm, strong body gripping desperately around me, sinking me in the splendour of his heat. The sensation of knowing I held his pride in my hand. My power over him was his power over me. We were utterly caught together.

We fought with every drop of strength, rolling between victory and defeat, fighting fiercely. I could only be astonished, again and again, by how beautiful he was. I could have lost myself there, just buried in his hot, pulsing pride, feeling utterly mad with it all. Drunk on the feeling of knowing him, and through him, knowing myself.

Gradually his body turned ragged and weak under the force of my fury. His vice grip on my arms dissolved as I sapped the strength out of him, feeding myself on his surrender. With every thrust I felt myself grow stronger, and felt him grow weaker in turn. In that cold wintertime room, my body felt like it was burning up.

Eventually I was forced to stop simply to catch my breath. He lifted one trembling hand to wipe sweat out of his eyes, looking up at me dazedly, already exhausted. My lungs and muscles were burning like fire. I looked down at him, our bodied still fused together, and saw everything I felt mirrored in his eyes. Desire and pain. Perhaps too much of both.

The violence drained out of me. The need to prove myself, to overpower, to receive recognition, somehow faded with my tiredness and I was left to see the shattered field we had fought. A struggle between him and his pride. Between me and my self-hatred.

And it felt so... human. More real than either of us had a right to be.

I found myself moving into him as if he had drawn me on strings, wrapping him up in my arms, wanting to touch every inch of him. He relaxed in my embrace, resting his head against my shoulder as I hoisted him into my lap, sinking myself back into the very depths of him, knowing that he was tired of fighting and I was tired of surrendering. And yet we no longer felt the need to break those tedious casts. Now, I felt, it was enough. Just to be warm. Just to be accepted.

So I moved slowly, and he tightened pleasingly around me until I buried my face in his neck and released myself into his shuddering, welcoming body, his name hanging on my lips, the world blackening around me until there was only me and him, him and me, and this utter pleasure that ripped through my soul.

And after that, it was my turn to finally pass out.

* * *

I heard him moving, shifting around in a rustle of fabric, and felt my kimono laid gently over me where I lay. I cracked my eyes open blearily.

He was sitting next to the fire, a powerful silhouette. Straight-backed, I noticed. So strong. So independent. This samurai.

So heartbreakingly alone.

I watched him as I always had. Perhaps as I always would.

I understood his emotions. I understood that he'd spent the months following the war running away from himself. That he hadn't had the courage to think about where he could go from here. That the thought of tomorrow terrified him, just the same as it did me.

My hands twisted around my kimono fiercely.

One way or the other, I had found him. This boy who was, in so many ways, myself. And I wanted him, without a doubt, to be my companion. I had no intention of letting him walk away from me. Besides, I had been right. He had wanted me. He still did. And now, now that I'd caught a glimpse of his soul that seemed to so perfectly nurture the light of mine, I wanted him too.

Without him, perhaps, I would cease to exist all over again.

He turned his head to look at me as I sat up, shivering slightly with the chill. He stared at me for a long time. I didn't know what to say.

"Your sword..." he said, finally completing his earlier sentence, "...is phenomenal."

I stared back.

Earlier, I would have taken those words from his lips as an insult, but things seemed quite different now. I could recognise his innocent sincerity for what it was. His simple respect. My long-wounded pride no longer snarled in his presence.

"The time of the samurai is over," I replied. "Skill with a sword has no meaning any more. There is no place for us." There was never a place for me from the beginning.

He arched one elegant eyebrow as if he see right through my thin attempt at disinterest. I could only try to hold my face together. I didn't want him to pity me. I didn't need his pity. I didn't want him to know how fiercely I regretted having being born in the wrong era, to the wrong mother. I couldn't bear that he should know just how frustrated I was. How much talent I had, and how I would never get a chance to use it.

But of course he already knew. My body had already confessed it all.

He rose to his feet and took a step towards me. "We made a wager" he reminded me softly. _Whoever wins the spar must do as the other says._

I lifted my eyes to him. "Stay" I said without thinking. It was the only thing I wanted now after all.

He stopped mid-stride. He looked uncertain and I immediately regretted speaking so rashly. It seemed it was not what he had expected and he looked as if he intended to refuse. Concerned, I quickly climbed to my feet, standing naked before the flickering fire, desperate to convince him.

He held up a hand to stop me before I could speak.

"Do you really hate the sword?"

I opened my mouth to concur. To remind him that I had already decided to throw all that away. That I was no samurai. That I never had been. Never wanted to be.

But it was hard, too hard, to lie to him now. I clenched my fists. The sword was my soul, just as it was his.

"You are too skilled to let your talents just fade away" he said. "So I will… practise with you. I will stay with you... only until I can beat you."

It was a sign of how much things had changed that he could even admit that I was stronger than him. I nodded, licked my lips, and knew I didn't have a choice. "Fine."

Life and death. Balanced always on a blade. The sword defined my entire life. It didn't seem strange to me that this part of my soul should be any different. I knew he was talented, but I wasn't afraid. Something about matching skills with him made my heart beat faster. My task was clear to me. No matter what, no matter what, I had to win.

After a tense moment he reminded me severely, "The day I beat you, I will leave."

It was simple. I liked it that way.

There was an eagerness in his eyes that I didn't dislike.

Besides, I would never lose to him. I would never permit myself to lose to him. And I think I might even have smiled. It was strange but, more than anything else, I wanted him close to me because… because when I was beside him I felt, more than at any other time in my life, as if I were truly myself. As if I could move faster. Strike harder. Just because it was him.

He gazed right back at me and it made me think that perhaps, just perhaps, he felt the same way when he was with me.

**~the end**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ARGH. I have been struggling with this chapter for more than six weeks. It has been a monumental pain in the arse. It has been through four different full-length versions already. It has taken me absolutely AGES to get it right. So dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday Kaede! January 2012.  
> I confess I spent more time researching for this fic than I did writing it ._." I have so many notes on the Boshin War you wouldn't believe it.  
> This was supposed to be a one-shot, but then I kind of ran out of time, and I wanted to get something up for Kaede's birthday, so I cut it in half. Shame because it was meant to be my first attempt at writing a serious one-shot that wasn't just a bunch of semi-senseless waffle but I guess it was just not meant to be, alas!  
> Part two will contain Sendoh's story and some lemony content, so please look forward to it!


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